Harwood Union Staff Blog 2022-23 : Harwood Staff Blog Update- September 15, 2022

9/15/22

Team -

We are excited to geek out with each other throughout this year and continue to foster teaching that provides access and meaning for ALL our students by considering the UDL framework. There are so many places that we can jump in, and the Teaching and Learning Collective will be working to provide sessions throughout the year that give US choice in how and what we are working on, since we are all learners too!

As you work on your lessons for the coming days or with your colleagues on course alikes, keep the UDL tenants in mind:

Variability is the rule, not the exception. Learners don’t have to do the same things at the same time.
All learners can work toward the same firm goals and grade-level standards.
All students will become expert learners if barriers are removed.

By starting with this framework, we are upholding our belief that all students can reach common and high expectations by planning for how to support them in getting there while accounting for their variability. That’s what UDL is all about!

In partnership,

Meg, Laurie and Duane

Calendar:

9/23 - Picture day
10/13 - 5:30 - 8:00 p.m. Open House *more details to come
10/15 - Homecoming
11/9 & 11/15 - 3:30 - 7p.m. Family Conferences

Appreciations:

Staff Member	Appreciations
Eric, Mary, Kayla, Bernadette, Yvette and Mari	For your incredible follow up to ensure we know where ALL our students are throughout the day!
Ellen Berrings, the TA leads, and the Aspirations team	For all of the engaging activities in TA this week to prepare our students for the college and career fair.
Meg McCarthy	Amazing work to start a ski and skate and snow shoe program for HUMS - THANK YOU
Kate Stauss and all the other club leaders	For proactively planning a meeting to figure out club meeting times in a way that allows access for the most students for the most clubs.

Safe - seen, heard, respected & understood:

Topics

Information/Links

Health Office Updates

Omicron-specific COVID-19 boosters are now available in Vermont. The updated booster is for people 12 and older who have completed their primary COVID-19 vaccine series and received their last booster or additional dose at least two months ago. Look for Pfizer Bivalent Booster 12+ and Moderna Bivalent Booster 18+ in the list of walk-in clinics. Bivalent boosters are also available at some pharmacies across the state beginning this week. Contact pharmacies directly for details on available products and scheduling. Boosters will be arriving in doctors' offices in the coming weeks. Learn more about these boosters

The health office is working on scheduling a flu and COVID vaccine clinic for staff in October. More to come…..

TA update

The Advisory Focus for this week is preparation for the College and Training Fair on Monday, 9/19

The activities to prepare and engage in the fair are designed to fit the developmental level of our students.

General Information:

Grades 9 and 10 will be conducting a scavenger hunt with a challenge for a TA bagel breakfast prize. The TA (in each grade) with the most submissions of successfully completed scavenger hunt documents will win!
Grades 10 and 11 will prepare questions they would like to ask of the presenters. A bagel breakfast will be the prize for the TA that submits the most completed questions with notes document.

Boxes for submissions will be located in the library.

Whole school challenge: This relates to the teaser we offered this week; What do a beaver, a goat and an elf all have in common? Using the list of presenters, students write down the corresponding school for the mascot. You have the answers…but don’t give it to them!!! Answers should be submitted in the box in the School Counseling office by midday on 9/19.

Appreciation to VSAC Ellen for her help designing activities, securing prizes and creating the boxes for student submissions!

Here is the modified schedule for Monday!

Slideshows:

College & Training Fair

On Monday, September 19th, we will host a College and Training Fair. All students in grades 9 through 12 will have the opportunity to explore and interact with admissions representatives from 45 colleges and universities from around the country. There will also be representatives from Americorps, Job Corps, the Advanced Welding Institute and the Central Vermont Medical Center to talk about alternate training opportunities.

Here is the modified schedule for the day. As the schedule suggests, you will bring your 1st block class to the Library at the designated time. Other than that, the only changes to a typical gold-day schedule are

Block 1 is longer to accommodate classes visiting the fair in grade-level groups
Block 2 is shorter so that Block 3/lunch start at the usual time
ELO M will meet in full Block 2 classes (grades 9-12 only) to make up time lost earlier in the day

Middle School will run on the usual bell schedule with no changes at all.

Safety Team Update

Please note the following dates and drill we have planned for Sept.

SEPT:

Clear The Halls, Sept 21 2:00 (similar to a medical clear the halls)

Please review your safety poster

Fire Drill, Sept 30, During TA (Note - we are still updating the following links - they will be ready the day prior to the drill - thanks for your patiences)

Frill Drill Information 22 -23

Fire Drill Outside Locations

Tech Update - please read

It has come to our attention that Harwood Middle and High School had open permissions to install applications on their devices without approval. This is not appropriate. I do not know why these settings were different for these Organizational Units, but as of Tuesday afternoon we have modified the settings to match the other schools.

The primary reason for this is a number of student chromebooks were found to have VPN applications installed on their systems. These applications allow those devices to circumvent our in-place securities with anonymity.

The fallout from this change means a number of non-approved applications may have been in use, and they will no longer work. We have a procedure for app approval. Moving forward, in order to get these apps approved for use, a support ticket will need to be submitted, and the application will be vetted and either approved or denied for use. Our primary concern is whether the apps meet our standards for student privacy.

This is no different than how every other school in our district has been operating all along.

Rigorous & Robust Academic Program:

Topics	Information/Links
Staff Meeting	Objectives: To identify a plan for Open House and how we will provide insight and clarity to families regarding our academic programming Staff Meeting Calendar Where: Dep’t heads will be reaching out with details - stand by ;) Note - Middle School will meet as a Core team for the first 25 minutes and then can proceed to your departments When: Tuesday 3:30 - 4:40
JumpRope	Quick note as you begin planning and entering scores in JumpRope. In the past, some teachers may have used assessments from archived classes to copy into new classes in the new school year. Unfortunately, this is not possible this year because of the rearrangement of Learning Expectations, which meant a change in the “standards bank” in JumpRope. One possible time-saving alternative could be to print a score report from a student from last year to see all the performance indicators that were connected to each assessment. Otherwise, you need to create each assessment new for this year, but then will be able to use them again in the future. If you want help with this or anything else JumpRope related, please reach out to Jess Deane!
ELO Lock it in!	When pre-booking students in JumpRope, it is important to make sure that bookings are “teacher requested”, otherwise the student will say something like “Oh, Mrs. Butler booked me? Well I don’t really love the math, so I’m just going to unbook and go to Mrs. Rand’s open drawing instead!” To ensure that a booking is teacher requested, you can either Book students using the “request students” button on an ELO session. Requesting students this way means that they are always “teacher requested” and cannot unbook. If you book students individually through the “students schedules” tab, you need to then (1) click on the session in their schedule, and (2) check the box for “teacher requested”. You can also leave an individual note here specific to the student.

Positive school climate and culture:

Topics	Information/Links
Staff Resource doc.	Have a question or need quick access to a doc - look no further than here.
Open House Agenda	We’re excited to welcome families back into the Harwood building. Please find the schedule for 10/13 here. Departments will be spending Tuesday Staff meeting time to prepare for this time.
	A reminder to please complete all tasks for the start of the year! Start of Year Checklist PLEASE NOTE - after our Department Head meeting yesterday morning it became clear that more time was needed for Emergency sub plans and that 3 days was not necessary at this time. Emergency sub plans are now due by 10/03. In the meantime Departments will work together to provide support if needed or a study hall will be held in an emergent situation. Mandatory Trainings are due by December 15th.
Suggestion Box	Sometimes the little things we need have the biggest impact on our mindset. So, while there is much outside our locus of control we will do our best to address that which we can! PLEASE NOTE: In response to an ask from our Suggestion box. We recognize that some of our clocks are not reporting the right time. Given our facilities staff crisis please take inaccurate clocks down for now until we have the staff to support.